Hope to Die (Alex Cross 22), by James Patterson (Century, RRP $37): While Cross My Heart, the previous book in the Alex Cross crime series, was a wee bit disappointing, this latest offering manages to pull things back on track a little. Lawyer-turned-detective Alex Cross is being stalked and things seem hopeless when his entire...
Fitz: The Colonial Adventures of James Edward Fitzgerald, by Jennifer Roberts (Otago University Press, RRP $40): The subject of this biography is an important figure in the settlement of Canterbury. He was the province’s first superintendent, a politician, a watercolourist and founder of the Christchurch Press. He was ahead of his time with such forward thinking...
Bluebells Cakery, by Karla Goodwin (Random House, RRP $50): You have probably looked at the covers of dozens of cookbooks and thought “I could never make that”. Looking at the cover of Bluebells Cakery, at a six-tier pastel-coloured cake, decorated with delicate ribbon-ruffle icing I thought the same thing Only, I had a crack...
The Hobbit – Desolation of Smaug, Chronicles – Art and Design, by Daniel Falconer (HarperCollins, RRP $60): Weta Workshop extraordinaire, Daniel Falconer, has compiled this third book in The Hobbit Chronicles series and it is simply gorgeous. Beautiful to touch and to hold, it covers a myriad concept arts, design, illustrations, descriptions of set...
The Crossroad – A story of life, death and the SAS By Mark Donaldson, VC (Pan Macmillan Australia, RRP $40) Winning the Victoria Cross requires actions beyond what most normal men or women would ever consider undertaking. There was nothing in the young Mark Donaldson’s life to suggest he would become anything other than...
Bones Never Lie, by Kathy Reichs (William Heinemann, RRP $37) In this new Temperance “Tempe” Brennan novel from world-class forensic anthropologist and No 1 best-selling author Kathy Reichs, it appears that the blood-thirsty killer who escaped justice in 2004’s Monday Mourning is back. Anique Pomerleau kidnapped and murdered a string of girls in Canada but...
The Mijo Tree, by Janet Frame (Penguin, RRP $25): This is an odd little tale. Published posthumously, the manuscript gathered dust in the Hocken Library archive for many years. Illustrated to great – and somewhat dark effect – The Mijo Tree tells the deceptively simple tale of a small seed who wishes to see...
Mrs Brown’s A-Y of Everything, by Brendan O’Carroll (Michael Joseph, Penguin, RRP $50): Irish comedian Brendon O’Carroll has taken the world by storm as with his gender bending performances on our television and movie screens so it should come as no surprise that his alter-ego Agnes Brown is now ready to take her place...
Guinness World Records 2014, (Macmillan Australia, $50): Someone has to be the best, the fastest, biggest, brightest, smallest or some other -est word, and the good folk at Guinness have made it their mission to bring us every single one of them. Proclaiming itself to be “officially amazing” (with those very words emblazoned across...
Cycle of Lies: The Fall of Lance Armstrong, by Juliet Macur (HarperCollins, RRP $32): No figure in world sport has fallen as far, or as hard, as Lance Edward Armstrong. Tiger Woods might have lost much of the esteem the world held him in following revelations of his truly epic sexual adventures, but Armstrong...
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